April 22, 2013 – Award winning UK art studio, Atomhawk, in partnership with development studio Lantern Interactive, today launched a Kickstarter campaign for The Realm, a new graphical adventure game for PC.

The Realm transports you to a beautifully crafted world, where 3D and 2D artwork combine to deliver a captivating and unique game world. Atomhawk call the art style ‘Western Art, Eastern Heart’, due to its blend of epic western fantasy art, captivating narrative and heart warming character relationships, influenced by Japanese creators like Miyazaki.

The story follows a young girl called Sarina, who embarks on an epic quest to save her dying mother, on the way she befriends Toru, a giant stone golem - the unlikely couple go on a treacherous adventure together, across wild and beautiful lands.

The Realm is set in the far distant future, when the world has been reclaimed by nature. Once proud cities now lay abandoned – overgrown with strange plants and twisted vines. Magic and mysticism has returned to earth and there are strange creatures lurking in the forests.

In The Realm, the player controls both heroes – Sarina and Toru. To complete the adventure you must learn to utilize the unique abilities of both characters to solve the many puzzles and overcome the threats that dwell in The Realm.

Atomhawk’s Ron Ashtiani explains more:
“The Realm is a beautiful and enthralling adventure game. Its engrossing story explores the growing bond between the two central characters. We are huge fans of the great ‘point and click’ adventure games of the past, and of the emotional storytelling seen in epic journeys like Ico. We hope to bring the spirit and essence of these games to The Realm, re-imagined and set in a captivating and enchanting world.”

“Choosing Kickstarter to help fund the game was an easy decision, we want to keep creative control of the project and offer players the pure game straight from our hearts and imaginations. We hope, with the help of the gaming community, we will succeed in bringing this epic adventure to life.”

The Realm was born out of a partnership between Ron Ashtiani (Atomhawk’s Creative Director) and a former colleague, Tom Szirtes (Lantern Interactive’s Director). Ron and Tom previously worked together, many years ago, on best selling, horror-survival game The Thing. Music will be provided by award winning composer, Richard Jacques, with Andrew Curtis, leading the game design and completing the senior team.

Atomhawk & Lantern Interactive are looking to raise £195,000 to help fund development of the game, which they estimate will take 8 months to complete.

Lantern Interactive’s Tom Szirtes adds:
“We are doing as much as we can using our own money and time, but there are no shortcuts in crafting a beautiful game like this and there is still a lot of work to be done. With your help we promise to cram The Realm full of as much beauty and spellbinding adventure as possible!”

Pledge rewards include:
· Personalised Portrait – Atomhawk’s artists will create a personal portrait of you in the style of The Realm.
· Games Music Writing Master Class - from award winning composer Richard Jacques.
· Concept Art Master Class – a daylong master class at the Atomhawk HQ in Newcastle.
· Developer Visit & Dinner – you will be transported from anywhere in the UK to Newcastle, for a tour of the studio and a special dinner held in your honour.
· Limited Edition Artwork / Figurines / Exclusive games content and much more.

Stretch Goals:
Ø £250,000 – MORE CONTENT - We'll extend the game experience by adding in more locations, characters and puzzles giving you a more engrossing in-depth adventure.
Ø £300,000 - MORE PLATFORMS - It’s always been our dream to see this game on tablet, and we’ve had that in mind right from the beginning with the design which is touch-screen friendly. This extra money will enable us to create an iPad and Android version too.
Ø £350,000 – MORE MUSIC - We know Richard Jacques is going to do an amazing soundtrack for us, after all he’s won more awards than he can fit on his mantelpiece. If we raise this amount of money, we can afford to hire a real orchestra and bring his score to life!

About Lantern Interactive
Lantern is a new development house that specializes in working with creative individuals and companies to apply its development expertise to produce beautiful, innovative applications and games. Director of Lantern, Tom Szirtes began programming at the age of 10 and was developing professionally for Reflections before leaving school. His first ‘proper’ job was at SEGA working on the Dreamcast console and hit games like Sonic. Since then he has worked at companies like Square Enix, Computer Artworks and Orange developing and managing projects across a multitude of platforms and genres.